


Special

by Evilawyer



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Introspection, Sociopathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-25
Updated: 2010-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-09 23:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilawyer/pseuds/Evilawyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody else is like them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Special

**Author's Note:**

> Written for shinodabear.

He's been watching Sherlock for a long time. It's been a little like looking in a mirror. The way Sherlock observes where others only see, the way he processes where others only think ---- it's so much like himself. Nobody else is like them. They dance their own steps to music that only they are intelligent enough to hear. They are both special, and they both know it.

The problem is, being special gets boring; watching special from a hidey-hole doesn't make it any less so.

Consulting detectives and consulting criminals don't normally consult each other, but he's not normal. He's Jim Moriarty. He's the cleverest boy of them all. He can do anything, including make them stop laughing. He and Sherlock can't dance together, but they can dance next to each other.

When he was very young, there had been one weekend when he'd been so tantrum-throwingly bored that both of his parents had finally packed him into the car and driven for what seemed like hours to take him to some stupid carnival. They'd gone into the House of Mirrors. His father --- not as stupid as the rest of them but nowhere near as smart as his little boy --- stood there, gob-smacked and cretinous, mouth literally hanging open, and marveled out loud over how far their reflections stretched away from them. Jimmy, meanwhile, rolled his eyes and told his father that nothing “stretched,” that it was only multiple reflections of the same view that made what was up close seem far away. Then he'd slammed his little body into the mirror in front of him and sent it crashing to the ground.

Mirrors can be used to create the illusion of distance, and anything can serve as a mirror when you're smart enough to make it so. Anything at all. Even people.

He devises ***gasp*** a plan.

He uses people, all those little people who are just smart enough to be in awe of him on some level, to dance right up to Sherlock while seeming to stay far away. It's the teensiest bit disappointing that Sherlock didn't call when he'd left his number, that Sherlock doesn't see him dancing in front of him. But, oh, the rush he gets from being so close while Sherlock twirls and shakes and shimmies. It's beyond entertaining, and he does love it.

And Sherlock, he knows, loves it, too.

But there are other things that Sherlock loves, or could come to love, almost as much as the dance. He can tell from the way Sherlock keeps detective inspectors and landladies near and from the look on his face when John steps out from the changing cubicles at the pool. He can see it in the way Sherlock kneels to unzip John's parka and in the way he strips the bomb harness off of John's body.

Sherlock has a heart, no matter what Sherlock likes to think.

The therapists his parents used to send him to would have asked him how that made him feel. It doesn't make him feel anything, even though he shouts with rage as he threatens Sherlock with fire. He doesn't feel, but he does wonder. He wonders what it would be like for someone to get to him the way John gets to Sherlock, what it would be like to have a friend. It seems such an ordinary thing. Not special at all.

He watches Sherlock point the gun at the explosives and smiles.


End file.
